LAS VEGAS -- Sunday's 5 p.m. deadline for teams to extending qualifying offers to their pending restricted free agents passed, and P.O Joseph did not receive a qualifying offer and will be unrestricted free agent when free agency opens on Monday.
A Penguins team representative said the team would not be putting out any list on who they did or didn't qualify, and that the league should have a league-wide list later in the day. The Penguins' other restricted free agents are Emil Bemstrom and minor-league forwards Corey Andonovski, Dillon Hamaliuk and Maxim Cajkovic. Andonovski is expected to be qualified, and Hamaliuk and Cajkovic are not expected to be qualified based on what Kyle Dubas said Friday at the draft. Dubas was still unsure about Bemstrom as of Friday.
Qualifying offers are extended to restricted free agents to retain negotiating rights. They are not contracts unless the player accepts the offer. All qualifying offers are for one season and are for a salary that is calculated based off a pre-determined percentage of the player's previous season's salary. Players typically sign full contracts that differ from the qualifying offer. The team can sign a player to a contract with more term or salary than the qualifying offer, they are not restricted when signing the player to an actual contract. If the player is unsigned by the start of free agency on Monday, other teams will be able to extend qualifying offers.
Not qualifying Joseph is a little surprising -- when I spoke with Kyle Dubas at the combine on June 8, he told me that Joseph "will definitely be somebody that we'll qualify."
But Dubas sounded hesitant at the draft here in Las Vegas on Friday when I asked him which of their pending free agents they're having discussions with at this point. Joseph's agent was still talking with the Penguins as of then.
"There's an arbitration element to it that is important to us, and cap space," Dubas said. "So you're trying to measure the players that aren't going to be qualified, the other players that are going to get to free agency to see if you go down that path, what is that cap space? What type of player do we have? Is it better or equal? Can we get the same for less money? There's all those types of things. So we'll work through that."
Not qualifying Joseph doesn't necessarily mean he's gone, though it certainly makes things more difficult with free agency opening on Monday and all teams having the opportunity to speak with him. Joseph was arbitration eligible, and if the Penguins wanted to avoid the risk of an arbitration case, not qualifying him would accomplish that. Teams occasionally avoid making a qualifying offer if the required salary would have been more than they wanted, but still re-sign a player. The Penguins did that with Justin Schultz when he was a restricted free agent. Joseph's qualifying offer would have been $892,500 for one year, so it doesn't seem like the qualifying offer scared them off -- just the threat of arbitration.
